Category Archives: Technology

Capstone Reflections

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You’re presenting the final project of elementary school in a presentation called CapCon! and your hands are sweating, your knees are weak at the thought of the audience. And then you wonder, how did I even get here? When I was presenting at CapCon! ‘24 I was like that, except a little less nervous. While this project took weeks of research, and weeks of writing essays, and weeks of memorizing a script was hard, the end result was even better. I ended up with a project on black holes that I will remember forever. By the end of Capstone I had an essay, pages of research, a full slideshow, a pamphlet, and most importantly a memory that will last forever.
Have you ever had to research a topic? Capstone started with coming up with an idea, after that you would start research. During research I was scared I would not have enough. The biggest challenge was probably the repetitiveness of facts from website to website. But in the end I had a lot of research. The best part of research was probably how much I learned. I love science and space and I know a lot about it. But, this research taught me so much more. For example, I learned that black holes spread materials like gold and platinum, or more importantly oxygen and carbon which are key for life. Isn’t that cool? The part that went well the most was probably how I wrote my research already in essay form. It set me up for my essay and my script, which is what I said in the actual presentation. All in all research was very enjoyable even though it was hard to do at times.
Black holes are wonders of the universe that are also quite dangerous. Even though these phenomenons may be dangerous they are also super important. They are laboratories for all of our theories and are also possible links to other worlds. All in all, I know black holes don’t deserve the killer description as they do more than just swallow things whole. I also learned that black holes are the key to understanding the universe because they can connect most things like GR all the way to quantum mechanics. That’s how black holes are the key to understanding our universe. (link to essay)
When I had to choose to do a TED Talk or a WeVideo movie I chose TED Talk because I wanted to feel the pressure of actually presenting in front of an audience. I also chose TED Talk because when my brother presented he chose TED Talk so I wanted to do TED Talk. The script was really fun because it was simple and you had the sort of feeling that you were almost done with all of it. The biggest challenge was probably cutting down my script even though it was still pretty easy. (link to my script)
Completing the final steps (slideshow and memorization) were fairly simple. For the slideshow I was able to complete a rough draft fairly quickly, but the one flaw in the slide show was that I did not have enough slides. After I added more slides my teachers said it looked fine. The final touches were some animation for the slides and a qr code that leads to my blog. Memorization was super simple. While you might think it took me a while to memorize, I was able to memorize all of my Capstone in just one run through. I think it was because of how many times I had read my script. I enjoyed making my slideshow the most because I thought it was fun to make what the audience will see. The hardest part was probably getting the slideshow to be perfect.
While it’s sad that the project is over, I’m happy our school and teachers gave us the chance to explore a topic we have barely learned about. Since I have been at this school K-5 I have always dreamed of Capstone, and now that I finished it I wish I would’ve thought even earlier about Capstone. If you would like to take the extra, extra step to learn more about black holes, I have made a printable brochure with more info. Here it is. If you would like to view it digitally here it is. I have also made a citations list, if you would like to see it here it is. If you would like to view my actual capstone here it is

Immigrant Interview Video

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As you’re working on an assignment completely by yourself you feel the pressure of the due date next week. You’re struggling as this assignment is huge. You feel the weight of impressing your interviewee along with handing in the assignment on time with a good grade. That is how I have felt the past few weeks. This assignment was hard because the timing had to be good. The hardest part about that was filling in your video in accordance with your script. While this project was annoying at times this project was so fun in the end as I’m proud of what I have written.
At the beginning of making the video, it was fun as it was all new and exciting. It was also cool how I was able to make my documentary more real as I was able to use videos. Making the script wasn’t hard but it was also not fun as it was just copying and pasting. The most annoying part of the script was making the timestamps. In the end I decided to not put them on as it would not help me. The ‘selection’ process for photos was very enjoyable. Wevideo, the tool for the video portion of the project, was super easy to work with as you would just search up what you needed and it would give you a selection of copyright free videos and photos. So WeVideo was definitely a huge help.
During this project I have learned a lot. I have learned that the hardest projects turn out the best. This project was a bunch of ups and downs. In the beginning, I had very long videos. These videos were almost double the actual length of the allotted time for videos. I did not know this until my tech teacher told me that they were too long. This was very annoying as now I had to go back and cut the videos to an even shorter length. That was very bad for me as my script was around 3:30 which was good but now my video was at 2:00 minutes! That was also bad because now I had to cut down my script while adding to my video. In the end, I was able to get my video to 3 minutes which isn’t bad as I started at 2 but still annoying as I had to cut around 30 seconds of script! I also learned that when you are going to interview anyone, you have to seem and be interested. Otherwise, the interviewee is not going to be in such a good mood as you are being rude while they tell you their story. I was super intrigued about my interview because my interviewee was my dad. It was very nice as I already had some background knowledge about his immigration process so I was able to put in some of the stuff I already knew about him. This included stuff about his home country (Venezuela) and some other things. This part of the video was really fun as it was just the finishing touches
Overall this project was super fun but I couldn’t imagine how hard this would have been if it weren’t for me being able to interview someone I lived with. This project was super fun and taught me how to do big projects on my own.

FA Reflection

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Making a feature article was fun, but a lot harder than expected. We had to get topics, know what we would write about them, and a lot more. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. Making a feature article included knowing enough about your topic to fill three slides. The only bonus you had was that text features took up a good amount of space. The feature article was very enjoyable though. Whether it was formatting, or finding pictures, I enjoyed everything about it. If you want to know how this process started and how it ended up, keep reading.
Coming up with a topic and message was as easy as expected. Off the bat, I knew I wanted to do two topics. Soccer, or UChicago. The hard part was finding my third as I did not know what to do. But after some thinking I knew that I wanted to do JWST. It was a fun process and the next part was to choose which topic I wanted to do. In the end I chose to do UChicago which was a fun topic to do.
The part I am most proud of is my formatting. In the end, it looked very good and without borders I think it looked more professional. For my first slide I thought I needed to make it look the best as it had to catch the attention of everyone who saw it. I decided to have one photo, a fun fact box, and a good amount of text. In the end I made the photo and the facts box very close to each other to make sure I could fit as much text as possible. In the end I think all the pages except for the second came out perfectly. I don’t prefer the second because it is a bit too text feature heavy. Also, the most enjoyable part of writing the feature article was by far formatting it. Formatting was deciding where you wanted everything to go and that’s important because if you had a bad format your slide would look to text feature heavy, or just off. I feel the slide I formatted best was my first slide as it was very text feature and text balanced. One part I found challenging was the writing part. It was not challenging, but the part that I feel might have discouraged people was the fact that it looked a lot smaller than your actual slide. For example, the requirement was to have an article with three pages or more. While I first started writing with no text features, my writing was around 2 slides. That got me very nervous as I did not know if I was going to have enough writing to meet the requirements. In the end it was not a problem and I was able to get five slides, two more than the requirement.
I would say that the main difference between a personal narrative and a feature article is that for a feature article you have to be a lot more broad. For example, let’s say that somebody wrote about their favorite sports team. They would have needed to remove that that was their favorite team. For me that came when I needed to remove a part of the Rockefeller Chapel section. In my first rough draft, I had a few sentences about how I felt about the chapel when I went to chicago. I had to remove that and a lot more as I talked about my time at the university. In the end it did not affect me and I do feel like my teacher was correct in telling me to change a few words but still roughly have the same sentences.
I used certain strategies to help me make my article sound better. One strategy that I used was to use deliberate word choices. For example, I had a sentence that used the word ex-student. While it does make sense, I thought alumni would work better as it is a quicker, and easier way to get my point across. Also, since I used a word readers did not know I could have put a vocabulary box that explained that word and many more. In the end, I did actually end up putting the vocabulary box in the second page, where I had a blank spot I needed to fill.
Making my feature article was a very fun experience. There are many things I learned from this process. Firstly, making a simple article can be a lot harder than you think. And second, articles like the NYT take a lot of effort to actually make. While there were some challenging parts, the article was still fun to make. I would like to do this again, as I am very proud about the article I ended up with.

If you will like to see the article here it is.

Animal Senses Movie

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The WeVideo process started with a 30 second video of clips and information to experience what we would do later.

 After we researched and wrote down about 3 to 6 packets. After that we did the real deal. We made a new WeVideo and started putting clips or photos that would add to the information.

 We had options ranging from 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and 60 seconds. After we were done making and recording our videos we would send it to are tech teacher and they would put it on YouTube.

 If I could change anything I would have probably changed using videos from WeVideo, to looking at the web to get images and videos. That would be the only thing.

What was challenging for me was the research. It was hard to find information about monkeys in general. They would mostly talk about Apes, Chimps, and gorillas.

What went well for me was the actual video its self. I was good at finding images and photos for my video. Also most of the photos and videos I found were able to help me support my information.

Overall I feel I did a good job, I also feel some information was really solid. And some could be better.

 

 

If you would like to see the finished product of the movie click this link below.

 

Ignite

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This is a project about Hurricanes. We talk about it in an ignite style, This style is just a way to inform people about something that you know, but the slides automatically switch every fifteen seconds. You have two slides in total so for all it is thirty seconds. How you should share the project is also their saying, “enlighten us, but quick.”

It started when our teacher told us our group. I was chosen to be in the hurricane group. After that we would get together in a group and discuss what subtopic would we teach. The subtopic we could teach where the cause, effects, prevention and safety, how they are measured, and the important events. I chose to do the cause. After we did that, our teacher let us research a bit. We only had around ten minutes to research, but I was able to get a full page. If I’m being honest I would say research was the best for me.

Day two was around the same. The only thing that changed was that we didn’t need to discuss what we where doing as a subtopic. We would have forty minutes to research. I got a page and a half done. I knew from this point on each day would be a page more of research.

Day three all the way to the last day of research all stayed the same I got a page of research in for every day. We would get the twenty five to forty minutes of research in. That would help a lot for the people who were having a hard time researching. It would help them get extra time since it was hard for them to get research in. And for the people like me it helped us get six to eight pages of research.

The next two weeks or so were one of the hardest. We had to take all our research, and put it in a script. This script is where we would put what we would say and what the people watching would see. We started by just putting around ten sentences or around two paragraphs. We would then put the most important parts of the sentences in the script. After that was almost the most important part of the project, it was time to start timing what we would actually say. This part was a huge step in the entire thing because if you could not get a clean timing (around 1 second under or over was fine but it being right on time would be better) You’re whole group what start to have bad times.

After we finished the timing we started to practice the real thing. We would make a google slide show, and add in the photos we wanted on our slides. After that we would go back to the google slide show and add the photos we wanted. We would practice that multiple times. The way we knew we were on time was when we started the practice we would click these three dots that would auto play the slide show each fifteen seconds.

After we practiced the slide show individually we would go back to our group and practice as a group. Our tech teacher helped a lot, he got the entire slide show together from all of our small slide shows. I feel that without him most of this project would have been really hard. him doing that allowed us to actually practice as a group without needing to switch laptops every thirty seconds. After he got the slide show together we never practiced individually anymore. Instead we would always work as a group. I think this was smart because this allowed us to see what was good from other peoples slides and add that to our slides. After around two sessions of practicing in groups we would start to practice with people watching. Those people watching was our teacher and our classmates. This helped us gain a feel for how it was with a real audience.

We did that almost until the real day of the project. A Friday before the real project we went to where we would actually present what we had done for those five weeks or so. It was great to know where we where going, because it gave me an extra feel for how this project would go and the layout for it. This helped a lot because I was able to gain trust that I was going to do well. I always thought I would do well but the fact of just being there helped me gain even more trust.

Now it was time for the real thing. It was the day of the project. The day started almost right after my teacher knew everyone was there. We then proceeded to go where we would share the project. Our tech teacher and regular teacher told us instructions on where to enter leave and a bit more of the layout. After we had a few minutes and we started to present. It started with my teacher and my tech teacher explaining the process. My teacher talked about the unit, and my tech teacher talked about how we made the project. After he would start the slide show and after it turned to the second slide it was my groups turn to show our project. It started by someone in my group explaining what we would talk about and our names. We called that the introduction. I was doing the conclusion. After that I would start speaking. My first slide was a bit over, but when it needed to switch to the next person’s slides it was really good timing. The same time I finished it switched. I feel this made me supper happy because I thought I would not get it spot on. Then the rest of my group spoke. I feel everybody in my group did a great job. Most of ours were greatly timed and the girl who struggled the entire time did it very well. I then did my conclusion. I was a bit under but the girl who went before me was a bit under so I feel that it would cancel out.

 

Thank you for reading this. If you want to see the final video here it is.

 

Hurricane/Tornado Venn Diagram

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The process of the venn diagram was easy. By the first day of research I had around enough research. And by the second  day i had 4 pages of research. By the third day I already started my ruff draft. By the fourth day i had started doing one in Google Drawing. And by the fifth day I had finished. Overall it was a simple process. I feel this was simple because my teacher explained what to do and broke it up to make it a very simple process.

Thank you for reading this reflection.